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Always worth remembering that the frozen river is down stream of Fairbanks, Alaska’s second largest city, with an urban population of 51,926. So it isn’t a crystal clear wilderness stream but one that is subject to urban influences. I have no idea how they keep the streets of Fairbanks ice free but any run off from that would be one small factor for instance…

BTW, weather could not care less about calendar dates, so the leap year meme is bs. What it does care about is the annual cycle of insolation. In 1964 the venereal (spring) equinox occurred at March 20, 5:10 AM AKST, in 2013 at 2:02 AKST.

I guess this is just “weather”, unlike the tragic F5 Tornado in Moore, Oklahoma, which was “climate change”

PS Climate Psience (TM) says: “The Ice Classic has given them a rare, reliable climate history that has documented to the minute the onset of the annual thaw as it shifted across 91 years. By this measure, spring comes to central Alaska 10 days earlier than in 1960, said geophysicist Martin Jeffries at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks — and that trend is accelerating. The Nenana Ice Classic is a pretty good proxy for climate change in the 20th century,” Dr. Jeffries said.

The calendar date/leap year hogwash is irrelevant…it’s the solar year (days past since the vernal equinox) that matters here (that’s where the physics of ice melt derive from). By that standard, the record is easily broken.

Berényi Péter,
The subject of fancy named orbital stuff I know nothing about, lots of words, no actual use to me.
[that does not read well, not sure how to put it without sounding aggressive, not meant like that]

So far as I am aware apart from a very slow time drift the orbit and calender relate well to each other. Any fixed reference will do, such as closest to the sun, about 4th Jan at the moment.

The computation I have used was actually done to the Julian date, not Gregorian and this matches the figures of

@tchannon – There is nothing wrong with your math, the issue is with concepts.

Our calendar is an arbitrary one, insolation is not. That’s what is the primary driver of climate, after all. Now, in 2013 there was a bit more insolation above Nenana (64.564° N, 149.093° W) at ToA (Top of Atmosphere) than in 1964, if we assume the solar constant is actually constant (which it is not).

If the sun were steady, between March 1 & May 20 (in 81 days) there were about 4.2 MJ more incoming radiation in 2013 on each square meter above Nenana than in 1964. Of course, (a variable) part of that radiation was reflected back to space and even the fraction absorbed & thermalized either in the atmosphere or at the surface could be blown away by chilly winds. That’s weather.

But, in spite of the primary forcing being larger, it took longer the ice to break up. That is, the spot over Nenana either rejected incoming energy more effectively this year than 49 years ago or it was more efficient in getting rid of the fraction already absorbed (or both).

The additional energy this year, if fully absorbed, would be enough to melt a half an inch thick layer of ice. That’s not much, but something.